My

Story

Eva

“I was born in Bandung, West Java. I have two brothers and three sons. Life was pretty normal growing up. I joined Rumah Cemara as a volunteer in 2010, which was the same year that I found out that I was HIV positive. At first, I was quite depressed, but we were fortunate that in 2010 we could access a lot of information and knowledge from the internet.

At Rumah Cemara, I was employed as a member of staff between 2013-17 but I am now back volunteering with them. I wasn’t really interested in football before joining them. However, in my opinion, football is a very good medium to communicate social issues. I mainly teach technical skills during my football sessions but there is a certain time when I insert a social issue. For example, during the warm-up or during drills and games I can include messages on different social topics. In Rumah Cemara, I learnt how to use football as a way to introduce and communicate about HIV. But when girls or women join my activities, I can also give other knowledge, not just about HIV, but about reproductive systems or anything related to women, like gender equality.

I am really proud to be a coach, I am proud to be a football player and, I am also proud that I can share the knowledge that I have. The session where Scort and the FCSA taught about the coach as a role model, it helped me develop my personality, so that outside of the field I can become a better coach and mentor for my students. Now, my students are open to share their stories or problems with me.

With the Scort Foundation and other organisations, we can create more coaches in Indonesia. I hope that the knowledge will not disappear… I always remind my Peer Coaches that I also started with zero coaching experience, just like them. I tell them not to forget that after they gain more knowledge they have to pass on this knowledge to their juniors too.

I do not know if my children are interested in football or not. What I do know, is that my children love to join the football sessions because they look at mum and mum is a person they can be proud of, mum is a football player, mum is a coach, so they want to join me. They were really happy and proud that they could see me go abroad to Mexico for the Homeless World Cup in 2018. I was the only female player on my team.”